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Andres Oppenheimer
After the murder of two U.S. consulate workers in Mexico's border city of Ciudad Juárez, many of you have written to me wondering whether it is safe to travel to Mexico. The answer is: If you are courageous enough to travel to Washington, D.C., you can safely visit most parts of Mexico.
Despite the escalation of drug-related violence in several Mexican cities, and the pictures of mutilated bodies dumped on the streets of Ciudad Juárez and other cities along the U.S. border, a dispassionate look at Mexico's murder rates shows that some parts of the country are indeed dangerous, but the country as a whole is safer than what the latest headlines suggest.
NEW STUDY
A new study by Brookings Institute Latin American expert Kevin Casas-Zamora, a former vice president of Costa Rica, helps put Mexico's violence in perspective.
According to Casas-Zamora's figures, based on
Consider his data of Latin America's most violent countries:
Honduras has a murder rate of 61 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Jamaica with 60, Venezuela and El Salvador with 52 each, Guatemala with 47, Trinidad and Tobago with 40, Colombia with 39, Brazil with 22, Dominican Republic with 21, Panama with 19, Ecuador with 18, Nicaragua with 13, Paraguay with 12, Mexico and Costa Rica with about 11.5 each, Bolivia with 10.5 and Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, and Chile with less than 10.
Comparatively, while the United States homicide rate is lower than Mexico's, Washington, D.C., has a murder rate of 31 people per 100,000 inhabitants and New Orleans has 74.
"Violence in Mexico is concentrated in a few cities, mainly in Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Baja California," Casas Zamora told me in an interview. "In Ciudad Juárez, it's out of control. But in the country as a whole, it doesn't come even close to Washington, D.C.'s."
He conceded that Mexico's murder rates may have risen in recent months as a result of the cross fire between Mexican security forces and the drug cartels, and between the drug cartels themselves. But he added that they are still significantly below what they were 10 years ago.
Largely for demographic reasons -- Mexico's birth rates are dropping and large numbers of Mexicans have been migrating to the United States in recent decades -- murder rates in Mexico have been falling steadily for decades. They may have picked up only marginally over the past year, he said.
As for Mexico as a whole, it says that "U.S. citizen visitors are encouraged to stay in the well-known tourist areas."
USE CAUTION
My opinion: Mexico is facing a dangerous rise in violence, and I would not advise you to spend your next vacation in Ciudad Juárez or any other place where the drug-related killings are taking place.
But Mexico is a huge country. To say that it's unsafe to travel to Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta or Cancún -- or that you wouldn't allow your children to spend spring break in that country, as
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Latin America: Mexican Violence Rising but Less Than in Washington | Latin America